Turning Clothing You Love Into Beautiful Replications

I have always considered replicating clothes that I love and remaking them using beautiful fabric. For some reason I never got around to doing it until now. Now I regret giving some of my clothing away. My first attempt was a top that I bought at Club Monaco years ago which I have always loved. I actually bought 3 different colors so I took apart the one that I liked the least. It was made out of polyester and I wanted to make it out of silk charmeuse.

The first step was to take apart the garment and press each piece. I then proceeded to trace each piece on tracing paper. One of the benefits of tracing on paper is that you can make any adjustments that are needed.This step is not necessarily essential because you could use the pieces of the garment as the pattern itself. Just take note of the seam allowances because more than likely there are 1/4 inch seams allowances, not the standard 5/8 inch.

Once I finished tracing the pattern pieces , I cut out the fabric in silk charmeuse. Silk charmeuse is one of the most difficult fabrics to cut and sew with. Typically I will lay the silk charmeuse between pieces of tissue paper before I attempt to cut it out however this time I was lazy and I used weights instead. Unfortunately the fabric moved when I was cutting it out which meant that some of the pieces were slightly out of shape. As a result I had to make some adjustments. However ,if you are not using a slippery fabric it should be a perfect copy of the piece of clothing you deconstructed.,

Once you successfully replicate a well fitted piece of clothing, you can use the pattern to create similar designs. For the top I just made, I have the option to change the neck line so that I do not have multiple copies of the exact same top. Another design option is to turn a top into a dress.

The finished top

If you find it difficult to find clothing that fits properly, duplicating the ones that do fit is a great alternative. If you are a sewer, this will be easy. For non sewers, you could bring the garment you want replicated to a seamstress and ask them to take the garment apart to use as the pattern. Remember to ask for the pieces back ! I would encourage the use of quality fabric because each piece will be an investment. Keep it in good shape and it will last you a lifetime.